Recently a survey of Americans found an abysmal lack of knowledge of our history and some of the basics of American civics. The pollsters concluded: “A waning knowledge of American history may be one of the greatest educational challenges facing the U.S.”

I once interviewed the late Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, who reviewed textbooks from a Christian and conservative perspective. They told me of an old textbook that dedicated seven pages to Marilyn Monroe, but only a few sentences to George Washington. Our young people today know more about the trivia of today’s celebrities than they do the men and women who sacrificed everything to bequeath our freedoms to us.

Karl Marx once said, “Take away a people’s roots, and they can easily be moved.” Dr. Peter Lillback, with whom I had the privilege to write a book on the faith of George Washington, said in his book on church/state relations, Wall of Misconception, “One of our great national dangers is ignorance of America’s profound legacy of freedom. I firmly believe that ignorance is a threat to freedom.”

Our loss of the knowledge of basic history and civics is a tragedy. We suffer from what I call American Amnesia. I even wrote a whole book about it. God is the source of our freedom—we have rights granted us by the Creator—but we forget this to our peril. In that book, I marshaled all sorts of quotes from great Americans through the years, showing that God is the foundation of our liberties.

Here’s but a sample, as found in American Amnesia:

• George Washington said, “It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe….” (p. 85)
• Ben Franklin told the Constitutional Convention, “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” (p. 281)
• Whatever doubts on core Christian doctrines he later had, founding father Thomas Jefferson never abandoned the importance of our rights as God given. Etched in stone at his Memorial are these words: “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” The answer is No. (p. 278)

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